As the groundhog returns for another spring, nor the kingbird’s chase of the hawk ever get old, I find myself preparing to read at the Clinton’s Art Bar once again, each day printing out a few more new items and running through drawers and shelves – what to do read, and what will prevent the recurrent visage of twisting pages before my eyes to glean text in stage lighting? An uncommonly exciting one though. I definitely get the ‘big reading’ buzz reading with Steve Venright, Penn Kemp, and Julia McCarthy. Across three decades of poetry readings, among thousands of admired or marvelled or loved literary stage presences, I have little doubt but that Venright is the one I feel most assured of, nearly always feeling as others I’m sure do so as well his reading was devised to please me. Right on the money, with that glorious mix of observation, arcane thought, incandescent communication, and honourably puzzling challenges to common thought. And oh what fun toying with his mystically able entourage when it’s my turn. And the heroic and spiritually vast Penn Kemp, I’ll be a melted puppy by the time I’m summonned to the stage. Also nothing but good to say of Julia McCarthy, rounding out a plenary ticket, and to think, Clinton’s Art Bar is free but for the option of donations, the old passing of the hat, and never a stress on it.

A few photos from last time!

Clinton’s is up on Bloor, near Christie and Bloor, except that it is Clinton and Bloor